by Noelle Adams
“Yes.” She wasn't giving up on this. She was stiff and sore from sleeping in the cab all night. She couldn’t imagine how he must feel.
Eventually, a very grouchy Ethan ended up taking two of his pain pills.
***
If they had been able to take the interstates, they could have been in Sioux Falls with only seven more hours of driving. Even by the back roads, with any luck, they should have been able to make it to South Dakota late that night.
But if the last week had taught them anything, it was that they never had any luck.
However, things were going pretty smoothly after the first couple of hours. They were in Iowa at last. The roads were straight and flat. Ashley was going well over the speed limit, and there was nothing around but farmland and a lot of blue sky.
Ethan was in another mild drug-induced haze. But he had only taken two pills this time, so he was conscious and basically coherent.
Her drug-aided interrogation the previous day had been so successful that Ashley decided she might try it again. But before she got to the questions she really wanted to ask, she thought it might be best to test the waters first.
“So have you dated anyone recently?”
“What?” he asked, rather groggily.
“It was a simple question. Have you dated anyone recently?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He gave a half-shrug. “The kind of girls who would be willing to date me are not the kind of girls I’m interested in.”
She thought about that and decided it was probably true. His reputation would prevent some girls from going out with him. The nice, old-fashioned girls like her who didn’t want to date a bad boy.
“But still, there’d be plenty of women who’d be interested in you.”
“Not really.” He sounded resigned. Almost bleak.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why wouldn’t women be interested in you? You’re good-looking and reasonably intelligent and kind of funny and nice enough and even sexy when you aren’t being obnoxious. Why wouldn’t women be interested in you?”
He blinked. “I just meant they wouldn’t really be interested in me. I could have found a date, no problem. But it wouldn’t have been me they were interested in. Just the guy they thought I was.”
She thought about that for a long time, and it made sense to her. Because the bad-boy moonshiner was really not the real Ethan.
“Thank you, by the way.”
She turned to stare at him. “For what?”
His lids were lowered halfway, but he was still watching her intently. “For your defense of me. It was impatient and less than eloquent, but I think it must have been genuine.”
Of course, it had been genuine. She was washed with self-consciousness, but she tried to make some kind of recovery. “No problem,” she said matter-of-factly. “I figured that someone has to be on your side occasionally, if only to keep you in line.”
She had looked back at the road, but when she turned her head to observe his expression, she almost lost her breath. Her heart started pounding wildly. Ethan’s eyes were so naked, so tender, that she thought she might melt away. “It’s been a long time since anyone has defended me,” he murmured.
And there it was again. That irrepressible hope. It sure looked like Ethan might feel something for her. Surely Ashley couldn’t be misinterpreting his face that much. So in the blissful glow from his tender regard, she summoned up all of her courage. “Ethan, do you think we could talk about—”
Before she could finish the sentence, she heard a startling and disheartening noise. Felt the pickup truck pull roughly to one side. Struggled to keep it on the road. “Shit,” she muttered, pressing on the brakes.
Ethan sat up straight, shook his head roughly to force himself back to alertness. “Blown tire?”
“Yes,” Ashley responded, pulling off onto the side of the road and coming to a stop. “Damn it! Why does this keep happening to us?”
They both got out of the truck and walked over to the front tire on the right side. It was completely shredded. A few small pieces of it were strewn behind them on the road.
Ethan leaned down to peer at it. “Hopeless. We’ll have to buy a new one if we can get to a garage.”
“That’s a pretty big if. What do you want to bet that we don’t have a spare in the back?”
“No bet.” Ethan walked over to the back of the truck. Lifted up the cover over the nook for the spare tire.
His face lit up. “Well, what do you know? Maybe our luck is changing.”
Ashley clapped her hands in pleased surprise. “A spare? Seriously? Something must be wrong with it. Nothing is that easy for us.”
Nothing was wrong with it. They put it on with very little trouble and had only one squabble about who would get to do the tightening.
“Too bad we can’t drive all the way to South Dakota on the spare,” Ashley said as they got back in the car. “But I guess we better try to find a gas station with a garage.”
Ethan nodded. “That’s just a temporary spare. No way will it get us to Sioux Falls.” He paused for a minute. “But the problem is we have to pay for the new tire.”
Ashley hadn’t even thought of that. “Oh no. We don’t have enough money.”
“We barely have enough money for food, and I don’t think we can assume we’ll get there tonight, not with the way things are going. I’m not spending the rest of our cash on a tire, even if we happen to have enough to afford one.”
She thought for a minute. “We still have Miss Horner’s gas credit card. We can use the card if we can find the right chain of gas station with a garage.”
“I guess that’s the best we can hope for. They probably won’t be tracing her credit, since they couldn’t know we have her card. I’ll have to pay her back a fortune after this whole ordeal is over with. We better find a phone so we can call around and see if there’s one anywhere in the vicinity.”
They came across a gas station about fifteen minutes later that had a pay phone in the parking lot. Ethan flipped through the ratty phonebook and started to make some calls. When he got back into the car, the outlook clearly wasn’t good. “The only one with a garage is back in Davenport.”
Ashley groaned. “We have to go back to the Quad Cities? That’s almost two hours away.”
“It’s that or try to steal another car.”
“I don’t think we should risk that. We’ve been fortunate with this pickup. We don’t need the cops after us again.”
“So back to Davenport.” Ethan sighed. “Let’s hope the spare tire will make it.”
It did. Barely.
***
“An hour?” Ethan’s voice was dripping with arrogance. “How does it take an hour to put on one tire?”
“Could be two,” the placid mechanic said vaguely. “Hard to say.”
Ethan took a step toward the man. “Would you like to explain why it will take so long to replace our tire?” His voice was soft, silky, dangerous. He was angry—but not the grouchy or passionate wrath he normally directed at Ashley. This was an icy fury. Ethan was clearly at the end of his rope.
The mechanic seemed oblivious. “Others here before you. Have to wait your turn.”
“Then maybe we can just have the tire and put it on ourselves. We’re in a hurry.”
“Don’t allow that,” the mechanic explained slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “Have to put tires on ourselves.”
Ethan advanced another step, and Ashley was suddenly afraid that he was going to push the mechanic against the greasy garage wall. She hurried over and took Ethan by the arm. “Darling,” she said sweetly, giving him a discreet glare. “Let the man get back to work. We don’t want to keep him from ever giving us the tire.” Her tone clearly expressed another message. Namely—shut up.
“I’m sure I can get him to change his mind.”
Ashley pulled him away. “We’ll wait our turn,” she said, pitching her voice so
the mechanic could hear. “And be grateful for such good service.”
After dragging him outside, she let go of him. “What is wrong with you?”
Ethan blinked. “I was about to get him to make our tire a priority. I would have, if you hadn’t interrupted.” He didn’t look quite so icy now. In fact, an angry fire had sparked in his eyes.
“You were about to make him mad, and he doesn’t need our business that much. He could have just decided not to sell us a tire.”
He released an impatient huff of air. “That’s ridiculous. I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think you know as much as you think you know. You can bulldoze over everyone because you always think you know best.”
Ethan was as angry as she was, in a very different way than he had been with the mechanic. He reached out to put his hands on her shoulders in his urgency. “When have I ever tried to bulldoze?”
“You bulldoze all the time! I don’t think you’re even aware that you do it.”
They were glaring at each other, both breathing heavily, and Ethan’s hands were strong and heavy on her shoulders. Then the fire of anger abruptly transformed in the connection of their eyes. It reshaped itself into something equally fiery, but of quite a different nature. Suddenly, absurdly, Ashley thought that she was about to be kissed.
She wanted—really wanted—to be kissed.
She had no idea what would have happened had she not noticed something out of the corner of her eyes. A man getting out of a dark sedan.
“Cute Guy,” she squeaked, grabbing at Ethan’s white T-shirt.
Ethan whirled around, scanned the lot, and then forcefully propelled Ashley around the outside corner of the garage. He pushed her against the wall where there was less chance of her being seen. “How the hell do they keep finding us?”
“They’re obviously luckier than we are or are experts at tracking people. What are we going to do?”
Ethan took his hands off her and turned toward the front of the garage. “You stay here out of sight. I’m going to check things out.” He started to walk away from her.
She grabbed him by the arm. “What are you doing? They’ll see you.”
Ethan tried to shake off her grasp. “No, they won’t. I want to hear what’s going on.”
“Ethan, no. Don’t be stupid. Stay with me.”
“Ashley, I know what I’m doing. Stay out of sight. I’ll be right back.”
And he actually walked away from her, leaving her to hide behind a corner.
Well, screw that. She wasn’t going to let him get killed or kidnapped. She silently followed him back around to the front of the garage and saw him standing beside the office door, evidently listening to a conversation inside.
She stayed where she was, deciding it was better for him not to notice that she hadn’t obeyed his instructions. Besides, she didn’t want to make a commotion and have the bad guys find them. She could make sure Ethan was okay from right here.
After a few minutes, Ethan abruptly turned on his heel and hurried back through the busy garage. Apparently, the conversation inside the office was coming to an end.
She saw his jaw clench when he saw where she was waiting for him. Grabbing her by the upper arm, he yanked her with him back to where they had been hiding before. “I told you to wait here,” he said through his teeth.
“This is a prime example of bulldozing. Do you hear yourself?”
“I wish you would hear me.” He leaned toward her, pressed her against the wall. “You're going to get yourself killed. I told you to stay here for a reason.”
“I don’t care what the reason was. I’m not a child to be ordered around, and I wasn’t about to stay here while you went marching off into danger.”
“I wasn’t in danger,” he insisted hoarsely. “But you put us both at risk.”
Ashley was now almost sputtering in rage. “This isn’t some old western, where the hero goes riding off to save the day while the helpless female stays behind. I’m in this too, and I’m not going to let you risk your life while I wait passively and watch.” She reached up to grab him by the shirtfront. “That’s not how it’s going to work between us. Not now. Now ever. I’ll never accept that attitude. You might as well get used to it now.”
For a moment, she thought he might shake her. But then something altered in his face, in his body. He went almost limp, let go of her, put one hand up to cover his eyes momentarily.
Ashley removed her hands from his shirt and watched him anxiously, having no idea what to expect.
She certainly didn’t expect what happened. He turned from her and took a few steps away. “They’ve gone by now. Let’s just forget it.”
“What?”
“It’s not worth arguing over.” He kept walking back to the garage, so she followed him.
“Ethan, it is worth arguing over. It’s kind of a big deal.”
He shrugged. Sat down in one of the chairs to wait for their truck to be finished. “Then you can argue all you want. I’m done.”
Ashley studied him intently. There was no more passion, fire, anger, or feeling left in his eyes or expression. He looked blank, shuttered, and withdrawn.
She had no idea what had happened. What had caused him to so completely shut down. One minute they had been having a passionate fight and the next they were like strangers.
She sat in the chair beside him, waited silently, and tried to control her emotions as much as he had.
***
It was five o’clock in the afternoon before they were back at the place where they had blown their tire that morning. The afternoon trip had been quiet and awkward. Ethan hadn’t seemed to have recovered from whatever was bothering him.
Eventually, Ashley had to break the silence in any way she could. So she figured she might as well get something over with, something she’d been wanting to say for a couple of days.
“I wanted to apologize,” she began. This was going to be harder than she thought, especially with the way Ethan was acting.
He turned and looked at her in confusion.
“I wanted to apologize for what I said two days ago.” Absolutely no reaction from Ethan. “In Indianapolis, I mean, what I said about...trying to give you a hint not to...not to be interested in me. When I said I could never have feelings for someone like you.”
“Oh,” he said vaguely, still staring at her strangely.
She swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean it. I was just mad and wanted you to leave me alone.”
There was a long stretch of silence. Then Ethan asked, “What part of it did you not mean?”
“I didn’t mean any of it. I never thought you were interested in me—I just said that to be spiteful. And I definitely didn’t mean the part where I made cruel implications about ‘someone like you’.”
He didn’t say anything in response.
“Ethan,” she said, turning again to scan his face. “I really am sorry. Surely you know I don’t think you're unworthy of anyone’s interest or affection. Haven’t I made that clear by now?” She wanted to say more. Say that she was in fact interested in him. More than interested in him. But she couldn’t quite get the words out. Not yet, anyway.
“You’ve made it clear. And I appreciate your faith in me,” he said, his voice a little bit gentler. But he had turned away, was looking out the window in the opposite direction. “I’m glad you didn’t mean what you said.”
She had apologized, and apparently her apology was accepted, but things didn’t feel any less tense or awkward between them.
Ashley had no idea how everything had just fallen apart.
But she was tired of living in this torturous limbo of emotions. It was time to clear the confusion up. So she took a deep breath and made herself say, “Ethan, do you think we could talk about some things?”
He glanced back over at her. “What things?”
She was in it now—no turning back. “I mean, can we talk about whatever it is that’s going on between us?�
��
Her words hung in the air for way too long. It was like some kind of cruel punishment for sins long forgotten.
Finally, Ethan glanced away again and said, “I’d rather not.”
She had never realized her heart could hurt quite this much. Her cheeks blazed in humiliation, pain shot through her chest, and her eyes started to burn. But she was committed now, so she said hoarsely, “If we get this out in the open, it might make things easier between us. We can’t go on indefinitely pretending that everything is the same as it was.”
She could hear Ethan inhaling and exhaling—he seemed to be trying to control uneven breaths. She was too scared to even look at him now.
Then Ethan spoke at last. “I’d rather not talk about it because I don’t want you to be hurt. I never meant to lead you on. Can’t we just leave it at that?”
Ashley was literally choking—on her dismay, grief, and mortification—and she had to slow the truck down so she didn’t run it off the road. Tears burned in her eyes, but she managed to keep them from falling by tilting up her chin.
She didn’t know what she’d expected when they would finally get around to talking about things, but it certainly wasn’t this.
But she had known all along that Ethan wasn’t interested in her. And she’d also known that he wasn’t the man she wanted, needed, and was looking for to complete her nice, clean, safe life.
All he had done was confirm it. It wasn’t like her world had fallen apart. It just felt like that at the moment. She’d feel better tomorrow morning. Or a week from now. A month from now. Her heart wouldn’t be broken forever.
This was what she got for trying to be honest and mature about the situation. Far wiser to just continue being hostile and stubborn...and safe.
***
They stopped at a very cheap motel a couple of hours later. They had a thirty-minute argument about stopping at all. Ashley thought they should keep driving for at least a few hours more and, if they stopped for the night, they shouldn’t waste their remaining cash on a motel.
But Ethan had insisted, and since he was driving at that point, she really hadn’t had much of a choice.
So they ended up in another dingy motel room together. In another bed together.
